Bowel movements are green

[Xariklia]

I exclusively breast feed my 6 week old dd and all of a sudden her bowel movements have turned green from yellow. Is this normal?

[jal]

The green is from bile produced by the gall badder. It generally means that food is passing through her without getting fully digested for some reason.

Generally it's not a problem, but look for other signs of illness (because green bowels is one of the symtoms of an intestenal infection). If the only symtom is the green stools, it generally isn't a big dealit should change back in a day or so.

Here's another web site I found with a google search with more input.
http://bbs.babycenter.com/board/baby/babybreastfeed/1822/thread/108848.

[sntm]

she may not be getting enough hind milk. happened with my DS (do a search under "pesto poo"!) be extra careful to keep her on one side until she is done before switching. my ped's nurse said it can also sometimes happen when you eat a lot of leafy greens or take extra iron.

shannon
not-even-pregnant-yet-overachiever
trying-to-conceive :)
PREGNANT! EDD 6/9/03
mama to Jack 6/6/03

[hellokitty1]

I have first-hand experience with green BMs so here's my story...

DD has had a few random green BMs before and I did my reasearch and attributed it to poor latch-on and not getting enough hindmilk. I started paying closer attention to latching and fed off one breast and the green went away and it was only random to begin with.

But about 6 weeks ago, she started having runny, green poops with every BM and went from having about 3 BMs/day to a BM after every single feeding. You read about the "AT LEAST 3-4 BMs", etc. but a mother knows when going from 3-4 to 7-8 is excessive. DD did not appear to act at all bothered by this but it was causing a lot more diaper changes and poop in the middle of the night. After about a 1.5 weeks of this, I took her to the doctor. There was no blood or mucous in the diaper which can be a sign of milk allergies. Because DD did not seem to be bothered at all, the doctor attributed it to a stomach virus that just seemed to take longer than normal to pass. In the meantime, she had me collect stool sample (so much fun!) to test for other things like parasites, etc. Those all came back negative. After three weeks, consistently green, runny poops were still around. So the doctor now feels that it may be that DD is lactose intolerant. To check for it, I could cut out dairy completely from my diet to see if the poop changed but it is so hard to avoid it bc it's in everything. I also considered trying some soy formula for a few days to see if that would change it too. But at the time, DD was having a hard time with bottles and it meant I would have to pump exclusively for a few days and I just didn't want to do it. The doctor said that if it really didn't bother DD that much, that I could just live with the green poops and there wouldn't be any long-term effects and she may eventually grow out of being lactose intolerant.

So, that's what I decided to do. There were a few days where I really tried to watch my dairy and avoid it and DD did magically have a yellow/brown bm after over 3 weeks of green bms. But it was still runny. Anyway to make a long story even longer, I have accepted the odd bms bc DD shows no effects from it. She hasn't had a "seedy diaper" in i don't know how long.

IMO, you should make sure "lack of hindmilk" is not the issue by allowing baby to completely empty one breast before switching to the other. Also, check the diaper for blood or if it's mucous-like. This could mean a milk allergy. Then go see the ped about it. I don't know how long the green's been going on but maybe you should give it like a week or so. And ask your ped about the intolerance stuff. Perhaps you can try the methods I did not want to. :-)

And let me know how it goes.

HTH

[MartiesMom2B]

Vivian:

I asked the ped. about the non-seedy poo b/c Martie hasn't had one in a long time. They told me that at this point her poop shouldn't be seedy. I was really concerned about it but they said it was normal.

Sonia
Proud Mommy to Martie 4/6/03

[hellokitty1]

Sonia-

Thanks for letting me know about the seedy diaper. I didn't know that it was supposed to go away eventually. BTW, who is Martie's pediatrician?

THX

[kfcboston]

I have firsthand experience with this one too, but with my exclusively-BFed DS, it turned out he has a milk allergy (an inability to digest the proteins in cow's milk, NOT lactose intolerance). Along with his increasingly green poop, he was very fussy and irritable and seemingly gassy and uncomfortable. Eventually there was a trace of blood as well, which was of course alarming. I cut out the big 5 right away from my diet - dairy, wheat, egg, soy and nuts. Needless to say - NOT fun. I reintroduced one by one and lo and behold it was dairy.

Apparently, this isn't freakishly unique in infants, and they often outgrow it at 6-18, maybe 24, months of age. It's usually a symptom of a little baby (ie - immature) digestive system. I'm slowly weaning now, and he's doing just fine on soy formula. I, of course, am still dairy-free.

HTH!